"Our darkness does not scare us"

it feels unbelievable but it is very true: i have finished my business plan. it is six pages long. the best part is the 1.5 pages of marketing and advertising ideas. i read it aloud to my mom. she said, "well one thing is clear. You've put a lot of thought into this."

i have also spoken to an intellectual property rights lawyer today who assures me that i'm pretty much in the clear using a celebrity portrait on a dress. she said the worse thing that can happen is i receive a cease and desist letter. she thinks the amount of dresses i'm ordering off the bat is a small amount and not something to worry about, that the real issue is the fame of the photo i use to draw from. i have sent her another design to look over that might skirt the celebrity issue even more yet keep the pop flavor i want.

i have found a pattern maker who will fix me up some real patterns, no fake wanna-bes like the one i made which came back wrong. she is amiable and willing, i only have to worry about my funding source as that has possibly gone buh-bye.

there is no fake cool feeling today. i've got some confidence back. part of it came from watching an ellen degeneres standup video last night. she said we are most afraid of our light, not our darkness, that if we constantly move towards our light and challenge ourselves we grow exponentially and become more actualized. i love ellen. i respect her tremendously. what she said may sound a little cliche, but as brian eno wrote on one of his famous Oblique Cards, "Don't be afraid of cliches."

Low

there's a low point to this process and i'm feeling it.

at the lowest point i wonder who the hell i think i am acting all cool like i can own a dress company and make awesome dresses. seriously. look at that face. who put cool on that face? because the face is not cool.

the face is naive.

i've hit a major bump in the road and i'm getting discouraged. i don't know how to fix my sizing problem without sacrificing my original design. i'm not sure my mom will be able to help. i don't know how to communicate with the manufacturer, i don't know why my sample came back so screwed up. i have no answers and i look at my silly face and i wonder

who do i think i am?! i'm just pretending.

right now there is no gas in my car and no money in my wallet. i've got a vase full of quarters, but does that really help when there's no gas in the vehicle? bill tells me to drive to coinstar.

coinstar? the depressing action of driving to coinstar and dumping a bunch of change so i can escape my house is awful. i say it's because i've got too much to do and that's too time consuming, but it's because it makes me feel so pathetic.

unemployment has taken over a month to be instated. i've started a freelance design job that will send me a check for work done last week, "sometime this week." i wonder if they have even the slightest clue how not helpful "sometime this week" is.

what a whiner.

and a faker.

Wonky Skating...Just for the Wonky

soooo, i made a sample dress and sent it to the manufacturer to reproduce.

it did not come back the same way.

first of all, the shoulders were the width of my dress, designed to fit me, a 6/8. the rest of it came back as a 4/6. this is very confusing and hard to rectify.

i'm having my mom over, she's an experienced seamstress in our long line of seamstresses (she is III, i am IV) - i'm hoping she can tell me why the arms are pudging forward. she can tell me how the manufacturer interpreted my instructions incorrectly and possibly put me back on track.

meanwhile there is the discovery by me that i need make at least two sizes with artwork that matches in the same way on both sizes. this costs even more.

a few weeks ago i realized the dress needs a slip, or liner. i sent the manufacturer a perfect slip. i've been wearing it for years. they made it identically. perfect. problem is, when the small dress (minus wide shoulders and pudging arm holes) is made, the slip will also have to have a shallower scoop, naturally.

i'm suddenly feeling the need for math. i'm going to use Illustrator instead and size by percentages? percentages are universal, right?

or i'll go find two already-sized patterns, make the dresses, then send them for identical reproduction. since i made my own pattern, there could be a flaw and a need for professionalism i don't have.

otherwise, made a new beautiful design today to go on a dress. i have three so far, now. two to go for my awesomely-priced massively-multiplicated order.

i haven't even applied for my business license yet.

long-winded projects are hard for me. i'm myopic and deficient in attention span.

this is a monumentally long project. i think of my friends and how many years they put into each movie. i've long lusted for that kind of endless focus...i gotta have it now though, whether i already have it or not.

it must be!

The Long Lost Triangle

does anyone, anyone at all remember Triangle brand clothes circa 1984? they made the bitchenest asymmetrical jackets similar to the one pictured here.

gray triangle pants with leather-strip detailing at the hem and and pockets and buckles at the waist! my favorite. i wore them to my first rock concert ever - Duran Duran. they played the oakland coliseum in the glory days before sporting venues were named after corporations.

why is this brand completely off the internet's radar? they were too cool to be forgotten! Somebody! Help!

Take your copies and shove 'em

Attack of the Clones
isn't it annoying how everything is a copy of a copy of a copy*?

just now i clicked through to the free people website via shop-it-to-me and i wondered, "hmm, anthropologie? is that where i am? looks weird." and sure enough, it wasn't anthropologie at all. just a copy of a copy of a copy. thank you free people! or anthropologie or whoever decided to be unoriginal first and copy someone else's design.

(like my old employer, restoration hardware: they fired all the designers last year, then picked up a copy of pottery barn and set forth to copy furniture out of it, mark the price up double and give it a new name. a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. yawn.)

and so you may start to get an idea of Farmacy's Mission Statement: nothing the same anymore. everything as different as possible. happiness through self-expression. bright eyes brought on by art. no more copies of copies of copies of copies.

Unemployed Inspiration
i'm sitting at my kitchen counter thinking i better get out of the house today. unemployment is starting to drag on me after a healthy two weeks of staying at home. it's hard being alone so much. it's hard to stay motivated. i hope i can have an office someday and someone to make talk to me over coffee for too long in the mornings. and maybe someone to force to go to lunch with me. i'll the nicest boss ever, but still...the boss.

where should i go out to today? i have $3.25 in my checking account. i guess that means i can get a coffee. maybe marin roasters. my favorite. too crowded maybe for a mouse. a mouse i would need to make a picture. should probably work on collateral now anyway. better not forget about Art in the Redwoods and the 2nd painting. need to call aunt ann. need to call a lot of people. write a letter to united about my voucher...i would pay someone right now to make these calls for me if i had the money. oh please, let me have the money someday.

which is i guess why i'm starting this clothing line. NO. actually, that isn't it. i'm starting this clothing line because i'm tired of being laid off. i'm tired of dragging my husband down. i'm so tired of working SO HARD all the time and getting NOWHERE with it!

this last time, the 7th lay-off in 5 years? the last.



*credit to chuck palahniuk for this perfect line about insomnia from Fight Club.